When I first came across the place, a little over 5 years ago, Americans were far and away in the majority here. Many reasons for that; quite apart from anything else, the technology was a lot more expensive in the British Isles, and most of us had to rely on costly, slow and unreliable dial-up connections.

That has changed. We still have to pay more than you do in the US, but the difference isn't so great, and fewer of us now are economically excluded from participation in forums like this. The balance has shifted, I suspect, to something closer to the true "folk music" demographic.

Martin only started posting here in April 2004, and presumably won't be very familiar with the way things were back in, for example, July 1999, when I tentatively made my first contribution. The default assumption back then was that everyone, unless they said otherwise, was American.